Léon 1909: A New Vision for Shelter Island's Evolving Dining Scene

The homely little structure at 29 West Neck Road on Shelter Island was, for many years, a local bank that fell into disuse and became the kind of trapped-in-time afterthought that’s not uncommon to find on the ferry-dependent little town stuck between Long Island’s North and South Forks. That is, until Valerie Mnuchin and her father, Robert, saw in the property what many before them had seemingly failed to: Léon 1909, a restaurant inspired by the French Riviera.

The funny thing is, it’s one of the most visible spots on the island — on the corner of the four-way intersection that links Shelter Island Heights to the public golf course, the center of town and Crescent Beach. If you’re on Shelter Island, chances are you’ll be negotiating this busiest of little junctions.

Yet, somehow, it was only the Mnuchins who saw its hospitality potential. In particular, the long-idle property reminded Robert of La Chaumière, a mom-and-pop restaurant just outside of Nice, France where he’d spent much time with his own father, Valerie’s grandfather, Léon, the man for whom the restaurant is named.

While La Chaumière’s elegant, rustic ambiance is the model for the Mnuchins’ charming first-summer restaurant, Léon 1909 — all the way down to the surrounding hilly terrain, the seaside air and the open-hearth cooking — it’s also safe to assume the father-daughter partnership invested quite a sum in the almost year-and-a-half project needed to recreate a Provençal-style atmosphere in the town locals lovingly refer to as “The Rock.” (Mnuchin says she was uncomfortable disclosing the costs of the project.)

“We wanted to embody that (Provençal) spirit at Léon,” says Mnuchin, a Wainscott resident who’s been flipping homes on Shelter Island for over 20 years. It was her family’s time spent on the island during COVID, however, when she first recognized the former Capital Bank property could be a worthwhile heir to its charming Mediterranean forebear. She has been credited with the building’s redesign.

While Mnuchin is a newcomer to the restaurant business, she is a fairly well-known commodity on the New York social scene. And if the surname rings a more particular bell, her father and partner, Robert, is a former banker and art dealer, while her half-brother, Steven, was the former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

The property, which has undergone quite a facelift since its banking days, “was the only one we looked at … I don’t know why it screamed ‘restaurant’ to me. It was a big project,” says Mnuchin. “We ended up taking down basically the entire building.” The new structure is a definite upgrade, with its consistent use of warm, natural materials and French-Italian countryside ambiance.

While Shelter Island has seen its dining options upgraded to accommodate a more monied crowd (see: The Chequit and The Pridwin, both under new ownership, along with more already established Hamptons-style eateries like Vine Street Café and Sunset Beach), Léon 1909 is very much the latest to embrace the sleepy, largely self-contained little town where fender-benders with deer were very much headline news. Indeed, times have changed.

Mnuchin says Shelter Island government was as accommodating as she’s seen on the East End. “Honestly, I’ve got to say having been up against the Town of East Hampton and the Town of Southampton, and building departments for years, Shelter Island was, I dare say, dreamy. They were unbelievable … they were like, ‘How can we make this easier for you?’”

Though the doors opened last August, this is Léon’s first full summer. The restaurant stayed open five days a week all winter long and intends to be a “clubhouse” for a rapidly changing Shelter Island community. “We did better than I could have imagined all winter … and we kind of exceeded our expectations for winter weekends and it was very much worthwhile,” she says of maintaining a year-round presence.

“I felt very committed about it being a place that local people would be comfortable, and while you know food prices have done a number on every restaurant in the world, and we’re at a price point we never wanted to be at, we really try hard to be part of the community and not be a Hamptons restaurant that opens on Memorial Day and closes on Labor Day and cashes in. That’s not what we ever wanted, and I think that rang true with (Shelter Islanders).”

Léon 1909 has proven a welcome complement to the island’s evolving hospitality scene.

“We are doing numbers that we’d hoped for but really weren’t sure we could do, but we are doing them and I think pretty well,” says Mnuchin. “We wanted to have accessible food that was also inspired and creative, but we wanted people to feel like they could come once or twice a week without it being fine dining. While we’re very invested in our service being top-notch, we don’t ever want it to feel stuffy or overly highbrow. If I wanted to make a restaurant in the Hamptons, I would have.”

Mnuchin says her staff, General Manager Chris Clark and Chef Mason Lindahl — whose experience includes work at notable city eateries including The Monkey Bar & Diner — all live on Shelter Island, and that the restaurant provides year-round housing for staff, nearly a necessity these days among higher-end restaurants on the East End.

As for Chef Lindahl’s food at Léon 1909, “People say we have the best chicken they’ve ever had,” says Mnuchin. Other in-demand orders at Léon include hearth-cooked proteins, like steak, as well as the Caesar salad, tuna tartar and Strozzapreti, an elongated form of cavatelli typical of the Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany regions of Italy.

There will be more to come on the menus at Léon 1909, both food and drink, so stay tuned to this space.

For more info about Léon 1909, visit leon1909.com.